Outriders

Nearly one year after my last post I have finally finished another game! I’m sure most of you just assumed I was done with this blog having been soooo darn long between posts. Anyways let’s talk about “Outriders.” Outriders is an action, rpg, 3rd person shooter game by Square Enix.

“Outriders” takes place on newly colonized planet that shortly after colonization began having an immense storm known as “the anomaly.” Many of the human colonizers were killed by the anomaly and those that survived found themselves at war with each other over goods and territory. A select few humans not only survived the anomaly, they were granted supernatural power from the anomaly. These gifted individuals became known as “altered.”

As one may expect, the player character is one of these altered. The player is able to choose 1 of 4 altered classes. The Devastator, Pyromancer, Technomancer, or Trickster. Each class has different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. For my playthrough I choose the Pyromancer. As one might guess the Pyromancer has fire based abilities that allow the user leave their foes burning. While you can only equip 3 abilities at a time, each class actually has quite a few unique abilities. The game actually encourages the player to switch up their equipped skills as well by offering accolades for completing skill specific tasks such as lighting 1,000 foes on fire with volcanic rounds.

The combat in “Outriders” is very satisfying all be it not particularly original. Combat unfolds in the typical fashion of a cover based shooter where you find yourself ducking behind cover and peeking over to take shots at enemies whom are doing the same. This typical combat system is made more entertaining and satisfying however by the addition of class abilities. No matter how many times you do it, exploding a foe with an eruption of lava from the ground is always satisfying. That being said the combat doesn’t change all that much from the start of the game to the end of it.

Similar to the combat, the RPG elements of Outriders are great and enjoyable but, not exceptionally unique. Your character levels up as you defeat foes and complete quests. Doing so grants the player with skill points that can be spent on a branching class tree. The class trees do have a pretty large variety of upgrades which do allow the player to build their character out how they want which is definitely a plus. Also in typical RPG fashion, the player is constantly collecting loot of different rarities and strengths. Higher rarity and higher level weapons always have better stats and modifiers.

Outriders largest weak point, is within its cinematic graphics. At its core “Outriders” isn’t graphically bad by any means. That being said the game has a hard time rendering textures for cinematics in a timely fashion, even when played on next gen hardware. As such characters will often start videos looking like featureless human shaped blobs. Even when the textures load in, character modeling is at its best mediocre.

Now that we got the bad out of the way, let’s talk about the things I love about this game. There are 2 aspects of this game that really grab my attention. The first is the “world level” system. The world level system is a replacement for a typical difficulty setting. All players start off the game at world level 1. If the player is progressing well without dying very much, the player will unlock the next world level. Raising the world level results in significantly more difficult enemies. That being said, the player will earn better gear drops, more money, and more experience if they play at a higher world level. The player can switch between world levels at any point, so they are not locked in they choose to up the ante for some better loot. This system isn’t fully unique to Outriders as “Diablo 3” treats difficulty very similarly. That being said it is a system that should be adapted by far more RPG games in my opinion.

The second way that Outriders stands out as great game is within its side quests. I am someone whom typically gets bored of side quests in RPGs and flat out stops doing them, except when I need to level, after the first few hours of gameplay. But that wasn’t the case with Outriders. In fact I finished almost every sidequest in the game. There were a few I didn’t complete at the end of the game but that was just because I was playing late at night and wanted to finish the story before going to bed. So how did Outriders make me want to play the side quests? By giving the player as much story in the side quest as the main ones. Not only that but delivering the side quest stories with fully voiced cinematics. I was shocked when I did my first sidequest in Outriders and it played a cinematic that was as interesting as the ones played in the main story.

So what did I think of Outriders as a whole? I thought it was great! Is it going to go down as one of my all time favorite games, probably not. Outriders doesn’t do enough uniquely for me to call it an all time great, that everyone must play. That being said, I would very comfortably recommend it to anyone whom is a fan of the “looter shooter” genre.

The Ranking

Well first of all Outriders will be going on the RPG list, I’m sure that much was obvious to you all. So where on this list does it go? I am actually placing it quite close to the top and setting it at the current #2 position. That puts it behind “Miles Morales: Spider-Man” and above “Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night.”

Console: Series X. Time to Beat: 29 hours 50 minutes 51 seconds.

Where to Play Outriders

Outriders is currently free to play with a Gamepass subscription. Additionally the game can be purchased on the Xbox and PSN stores.